Atelier Kiki: Giving Trees of Haida Gwaii

For eight weeks, from March till May 2012, the students of four classes (Miss Karrow, Miss Jung, Mr. Lagasse and Mr. Reid) were part of the Giving Trees of Haida Gwaii art project.

Sk’aadgaa Naay Elementary School is surrounded by forests and a trail that leads to old growth Cedar and Spruce trees and an eagle nest. This area formed the inspiration for the Giving Trees of Haida Gwaii project.

Each class was assigned a tree to work with for the period of the art project. Miss Karrow’s Kindergarten class worked with the Cedar tree, Miss Jung’s class learned about the Spruce tree, Mr. Lagasse’s class explored Hemlock and Mr. Reid’s class had Alder trees as their focus.

Students had the opportunity to learn about native uses and life cycles of the trees on a guided hike by Linda Tollas, Interpretation Officer at Parks Canada. They learned how the trees are part of an unbroken, interdependent circulation of water, air, plants and beings.

The students worked with Kiki to explore and express their connection to the earth, through individual painting exercises.

Each week they combined meditation, yoga and art to develop sensitivity to the natural world and access their creative source

Childs pose

The students were introduced to three-dimensional felt making by creating seeds out of raw wool fibres, wrapped around a rock. Then with warm soapy water and friction (rubbing), the wool shrinks and the fibres interlock, creating a solid fabric.

Watering the seeds

The next week students rolled wool into felted roots to be incorporated into their large felt mural. Here they are laying out the roving for the roots

Rolling the roots

The students created stories and sketches for their trees.

An important part of the art process is making design and composition choices.

After listening to the stories and looking at all the sketches, one main sketch per class was created as a guide for the large felt murals.

The students created ‘pre-felt’ details for the large felted murals. Pre-felt is a partial felted piece, that can easily be incorporated in larger felt pieces.

Wool laid out for Pre-felt

Then at last we created the large felted murals. Two to three students at a time would work with Kiki to lay out the wool, and create the design of the felt mural.